| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: The quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again;
and Miss Smith receiving her summons, was with her without delay,
and unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily
down the gravel walk--a Miss Martin just appearing at the door,
and parting with her seemingly with ceremonious civility.
Harriet could not very soon give an intelligible account.
She was feeling too much; but at last Emma collected from her
enough to understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it
was creating. She had seen only Mrs. Martin and the two girls.
They had received her doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing
beyond the merest commonplace had been talked almost all the time--
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: the western rim a pale ghost of the evening star seemed to smile at Carley,
to bid her look and look. Like a strain of distant music, the dreamy hum of
falling water, the murmur and melody of the stream, came again to Carley's
sensitive ear.
"Do you love this?" asked Glenn, when they reached the green-forested
canyon floor, with the yellow road winding away into the purple shadows.
"Yes, both the ride--and you," flashed Carley, contrarily. She knew he had
meant the deep-walled canyon with its brooding solitude.
"But I want you to love Arizona," he said.
"Glenn, I'm a faithful creature. You should be glad of that. I love New
York."
The Call of the Canyon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks-factories producing
condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars. Then the business
center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed trolleys unloading, and
high doorways of marble and polished granite.
It was big--and Babbitt respected bigness in anything; in mountains, jewels,
muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted moment, the lyric
and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of the outlying factory
suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely eroded banks; of the
orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and all the fat dairy land and
big barns and comfortable herds. As he dropped his passenger he cried, "Gosh,
I feel pretty good this morning!" III
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